so i had some 100k maintenance done recently and in doing this my mechanic replaced the gasket on my vtec solenoid (it had a leak)......after a couple days i noticed the solenoid was leaking oil still, i took it back and we looked at it together, gasket and everything was fine so we cleaned it up and put it all back together. well i just noticed it was still leaking. is this a common problem? could the solenoid be bad and need replacing? its def not the gasket and other than a problem with the actual solenoid itself i cant think of what is being overlooked. thanks in advance for any help.

 

there is a secondary gasket sandwiched between the upper half and the lower half of the unit, it could be leaking. The two halves are held together by three small bolts located on the top of the unit. The other thing is that sometimes you get a valvecover leak and the oil ends up at the vtec solenoid based on the angle of the engine, so while it looks like it is coming from the vtec solenoid it could be coming from the valvecover. Those are likely the only two possible sources once you confirmed that main gasket is not leaking, I trust the bolts of the solenoid were torqued properly when reinstalled.

If you need a solenoid I have a used one for sale, cheap, 60k on it.